Guess What
by annanonymous72
Summary: Isabella Lyons was a peculiar child and only when she unearths a broom in her backyard shed does her life begin to fall into place. The broom was a secret that her mother desperately wanted to hide, and Isabella must run away in order to fulfill her dreams of a magical, wonderful life at Hogwarts. *next-gen, will include characters like Rose, James, Albus, etc. First fic, hooray!*
1. Chapter 1

**A/N- Here's the first chapter of my first fanfic! Enjoy... **

**Copyright Disclaimer- JK Rowling built the dollhouse, I'm only playing with the dolls.**

**Chapter 1- The Shed**

Isabella Lyons was a peculiar child. Isabella Lyons didn't like her life. It was boring.

After all, there are only so many books that someone can read before their eyes start to hurt. What could one do then? Not watch TV. TV was boring. Not go play. You needed friends to play with.

And so, Isabella Lyons found herself exploring the shed in the backyard. It wasn't a particularly interesting shed, but she had read enough books to know that things didn't need to _look_ interesting to _be _interesting. The shed was a prime example.

Isabella lived with her mother. Lara Lyons wasn't a very talkative person by nature. No, Lara Lyons was very quiet. Her husband had died some ten years past, when Isabella was just a baby. They never talked about him, but his picture was on the mantelpiece, watching Isabella with the large, wide-set hazel eyes they shared.

No, never ever mention Thomas Lyons. Or Clarence Montgomery, Lara's deceased brother. Or Albert Montgomery, her late father. Then Lara would give Isabella THE LOOK. THE LOOK that said NO NO NO NO NO.

Isabella hated THE LOOK. It made her feel scared. Alone. Then she would laugh and remind herself that she _was_ alone. It really wasn't funny, but laughing made her feel better.

There were too many dead people in her family, Isabella decided. She didn't know why. That was what she wished for when she blew out her eleven candles in the spring. To know what happened to her family. Lara hadn't told her how they died, only that now it was just her and Isabella and Grandma Jeanne and Auntie Ellen and her two kids.

Isabella barely knew her two cousins, except that Daisy, who was thirteen, went to some fancy boarding school. The name was a _secret._ If Isabella asked about it, she would get THE LOOK again. Isabella hated THE LOOK.

There were too many secrets, Isabella decided. Too many secrets and too many dead people.

The shed was another secret. Never open the shed, Isabella. There are spiders in the shed. They might bite you.

Isabella wasn't scared of spiders.

The shed door creaked open a centimeter. Another centimeter. Another. Then it wouldn't open any further. There was a chain holding the door in place with a lock on it. Sigh.

Isabella pulled a paperclip out of her pocket and bent it into a line. Slowly, she inserted it into the rusty lock and jiggled it around in a certain way. That was how the book said to jiggle it.

_ Click_, said the lock. The door opened.

"Ewww." Isabella wrinkled her nose, and pulled her butt-length auburn hair back into a ponytail. There were spiders, or at least there may have been. The shed's contents were coated with cobwebs.

Isabella wasn't scared of spiders, but that didn't mean she liked cobwebs. Backing away from the shed, she grabbed a stick off of the ground.

_ Poke, poke, pokity pokey poke_, went the stick. Nose still wrinkled, Isabella lifted some of the cobwebs off of an object.

A shovel. Why would her mother be so scared of Isabella seeing a shovel?

Well, she wouldn't, Isabella knew that. There had to be something more interesting than a _shovel._

So Isabella dug and dug, and exchanged her stick for a new one when it got too cobwebby. Finally, she struck gold. Or wood.

It was a broom, unlike any she had seen before. Gently, she lifted it out of the shed and lay it on the grass. A leaf fallen early and still green from a maple tree helped her to wipe it down fully.

A seat emerged. Two foot-rests and stirrups. On one end, a sleek tail that would be useless in sweeping a floor. On the other, a faded and chipped label. In gold paint, it read _Shooting Star 24 All-Purpose Broom_ and below that, in neat, slanted handwriting, was written _Property of Thomas Lyons._


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N- Hello again, and thanks to those who reviewed and favorited! Here's the next chapter, hot from the press! By the way, I'm changing to first person... sorry. **

**Copyright disclaimer- Not mine except for Isabella and any other OC's.**

**Chapter 2- The Broom**

It was beautiful. Spectacular. Magnificent. Elegant. _Magical._ I hadn't seen anything like it before.

As I ran my hand over it, sliding over the varnished red wood and smoothing down the twigs in the tail, I felt a sort of... presence. The broom seemed to hum with its own energy. Huh. Weird.

I tried to pick it up from the grass. Physically, it moved, but it seemed to want to remain stuck to the ground. I put it down, then tried talking to it.

"Come on, broom! Come on, come on!" I felt stupid. Here I was, wasting my Saturday talking to a piece of wood. _Presence._ Pshaw. Who was I kidding?

"Stupid broom! Come on up! Up, up, up!" _Owwwwtch_!

Note to self: brooms do not like being called stupid. The Shooting Star had risen suddenly and smacked into my fingers. It worked.

I couldn't wrap my mind around it. It had _moved._ On its _own. _Things like this didn't happen, unless you were in a book. Some sort of fantasy... I pinched my arm. Bad idea. Bad, bad, _bad_ idea.

Note to self: do not pinch self with fingers if fingers were just slammed into with a very solid piece of wood. So now, I was left holding a broom with very sore fingers and a rather grumpy mindset.

If I was thinking on the right track and this broom was the type of broom I thought it was (it had a seat and footrests... so probably not for cleaning), then what I was about to do should work.

"Okay, Isabella, you got this. You won't fall." Taking a deep breath and a deep swallow, I leapt onto the broom.

Extraordinarily, it didn't fall. The Shooting Star stayed suspended in place, held seemingly by nothing yet defying gravity. I gripped it tight, my knuckles white and palms sweaty in nervousness. Gently, I tipped the handle up. The broom started rising at an angle, slowly. I leaned forward. Faster and faster. It was terrifying.

But oh, was it exhilarating! I leaned to my left, and a sharp turn ensued. My stomach was churning, partially the nausea of hurtling through the sky and partially the butterflies multiplying and cartwheeling around inside me. My house was beneath me, small and white, squatting next to the road that twisted and turned off to nowhere. Pulling the broom level, I sped forward, following the road until I saw another small, white house. I lived in that area that wasn't a town but wasn't quite country, some hundred miles north of London. There was a town near my house, though, called Kelby.

As I passed the next house, I realized that someone might see and quickly flew back home. Flew! Flew back home! The sheer novelty of it was unbelievable. Lightly, I landed and dismounted. Still dizzy with glee and slightly nauseous, I lay down on the sweet-smelling grass and watched the clouds scud lazily across the perfect, endless blue of the sky.

I had discovered that little girls could fly. Heck, anything could be possible now! Dragons, wizards, dwarves...

I couldn't tell my mum. No, that was out of the question. She would know that I had looked in the shed. Why did she have a magical broom in the shed with her brother's name on it? I was itching to know.

I glanced at my watch. 3:30 p.m. Mum would be home in just half of an hour. I had to hurry. The shed door was closed, and the lock clicked shut again. The cobwebbed sticks broken up and thrown behind a tree, and the leaf drifted away in the wind. All of the cobwebs smeared in the grass were scooped up and wiped discreetly on the branches of a tree, hidden by the leaves. All of that solved, and still twenty minutes left to solve the biggest problem: the broom.

I wasn't going to put it back in the shed to gather cobwebs. It would be a shame after discovering it in all of its glory... no, there had to be some other place! Somewhere where my mom never went.

The attic! Old and full of things my mom would never need or never wanted to see again. Old wedding pictures, mementoes of her brother and husband, books from her college days and clothes long outgrown. Somedays, I would go up there to read and come down covered in dust. Of course, I made sure she never found out. That would merit THE LOOK.

My feet took me to the back door and through the kitchen. Up the stairs, past my room, and through the door that led to the stairs to the attic. Every step creaked its complaint as a dashed over it. Up, and up, until I reached the second door.

I turned the rusty knob and pushed it open. I was surrounded by the smell of disuse and dust. Lit by the light from a single dirty window, the attic was a place where if I wanted something, I could find it. Once, my backpack's zipper had broken and I urgently needed a new one. There wasn't time to get one before school, so I popped up to the attic and found a green canvas knapsack, large and covered in pockets. Until I got a new bag, it served its purpose wonderfully.

Where to put the broom? I raked my eyes over the room until they rested on the darkest, deepest corner. There, behind a lovely red leather steamer trunk embossed with the one word 'LYONS,' did I tuck the broom, covering it from sight with a dusty green plastic tarp.

Satisfied, I dashed down to my room to dust myself off just as I heard my mom entering the house. Grabbing a book from my overfilled bookshelf I ran downstairs to greet her.

"Hello, Mum! How was your day?" I flashed her an innocent smile, trying to make it look convincing. She gave me an odd look, then sighed, dismissing any suspicions.

"Fine, I guess. One little boy tried to stick a paintbrush up his nose and nearly succeeded, but other than that, nothing much." She worked at the local preschool. It wasn't a lot of money but then again, we didn't need much. I asked, trying to distract her,

"So what's the activity for tomorrow? I still think you should make noodle-art... but then again, that would hurt going up the nostrils."

"Ah, I was thinking more along the lines of finger paint. Nothing to stick in your nose except your fingers, and it's not like I haven't seen that before..." She kept on talking. No suspicions or unusual topics for now.

Or at least, until_ the letter_...

**A/N- Ooh, a cliffie! Muahaha... anyway, please review and I hope you enjoyed!**


	3. Chapter 3

**Copyright Disclaimer- Not mine, duh...**

**A/N- Well, I'm sure you've all guessed at what happens now. Thank you sooo much to those who reviewed; it means so much to me! A whole bunch of secrets will be revealed... without further ado, chapter 3!**

**Chapter 3- The Letter**

The evening passed uneventfully, with a dinner of pasta and then a long book. Tomorrow was the birthday celebration day, July 7th. It was the day when we celebrated my dad and my uncle's birthdays. They had been born on July 5th and July 14th, respectively, and my mom always wrote their names in tiny, neat script, squeezed together on the cake.

That night, I dreamt of flying. I had leapt out of the window and soared across the countryside, the cool night wind kissing my cheeks as I drifted through the clouds, sparse and purple, like remnants of a nostalgic memory lost somewhere in the distance.

It was a beautiful dream, but, like all dreams, it had to end.

"Oh my, oh my, oh my!" my mother was shrieking downstairs. At seven in the morning. ON SUNDAY. What was wrong with the woman?!

_Thud._ Okay, that didn't sound good. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and lazily pattered downstairs.

My mom was lying, unconscious, on the rug, a letter grasped in her thin white hand.

Now, Mum had always been sensitive and emotional, but this had only happened once before, when Grandpa Albert died. In a mild state of panic, I dragged her over to the couch and, mustering up all of my strength, heaved her on to it, wheezing like a cat trying to cough up a hairball.

Slowly, I pried the letter from her grasp. What could it be? Had somebody else died? Maybe Grandma Jeanne... she was sick in the hospital after catching pneumonia in the spring and never quite recovering.

No, it was addressed to me. Immediately, I thought of the broom. Had someone seen me?

_Miss I. Lyons_

_Her Living Room_

_17 Oakwood Lane_

_Kelby_

_East Anglia_

I was pretty sure that the proper address format did not include room. How would someone even know what room I was standing in? Rather creepy...

"_No!_" Just as I was about to break the seal on the letter (yeah, a seal, made of purple wax. Kind of weird...), my darling Mum came to and snatched it out of my hand.

"Hey! That's addressed to me! Give it back!" I was outraged. I really wanted that letter.

"No, honey." Her face was pasty and white except for a panicked red flush high on her cheekbones, and her pale green eyes swiveled nervously about the room. "That letter... that letter... it could be... Dangerous. Yes, dangerous, that's what. Here, I'll make you some chocolate-chip waffles, and you go back to bed. I'll call you down when they're ready." Really, she was a horrible actress, no matter how appealing chocolate-chip waffles seemed.

"Mum. Give. Me. That. Letter!" I held out my hand. She narrowed her eyes and stared at me, eyes hard and determined. THE LOOK. It wouldn't work this time. "Come on, it's got to be important!"

"The other letter, it came in the spring, on your birthday... it said today we would get another letter. Yes, yes, that's what it said... dismissed it, I did, oh, fool that I was! I should have written them, told them that we didn't want it! Oh, oh, I thought I'd escaped, I even hid the broom, but no, they wouldn't leave us alone!" She shrieked, and collapsed. A full out breakdown. She'd mentioned the broom... I smelled a fish.

"Mum?" I tried to speak gently, and knelt beside her on the floor. "What's going on, Mum? I want to know. Does this have to do with Uncle Clarence and Dad? Mum, please tell me. I have to know this, please." She looked up, eyes moist and a sad expression on her face. The face of someone who's cornered and finally given in.

"My family was... odd. Different, if you will. Isabella darling, you're not normal. _We're _not normal." She swallowed, and faced me.

"Can we start from the beginning, Mum? Uncle Clarence?" She nodded.

"He wasn't the beginning. My mother, your Grandma Jeanne, was... is." I was surprised. "Honey, she's a witch. Uncle Clarence was a wizard." I gasped, and tears began to flow down my face. I knew there was something different. I just didn't expect it to be _this _different.

"Was Grandpa Albert a wizard?"

"No, he was a normal muggle. A non-magical person. He did actually die in a car crash. Your father was a wizard too." This was the biggest surprise.

"Are you... are you a witch?" She smiled, sadly.

"No, darling, I'm what they call a squib. A muggle born to a magical person. I was always jealous of Clarence and Thomas, until they died. I realized that magic isn't any good. It's dangerous. Unpredictable. It can kill people." She paused, taking another deep breath. "There was... a war. A massive war. So many were killed. By magic. There was a man named Riddle. They called him Lord Voldemort. There was a school." She held up the letter, weakly. "Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. There, children learned spells and potions, charms, transfiguration. It was a fairytale dream. When I didn't get the letter, I couldn't talk for weeks. My heart, my dreams, all gone. Clarence was a second year. I thought that I would be a first year, but no. The war, it was the year when your aunt Ellen became pregnant. He fought and died. Magic is the cause of his death. All of it, magic. The reason Ellen miscarried and remarried. Daisy and her brother aren't even related to you. Poor woman. I never dreamed I would be in a similar situation. But ten years ago, when you were just a baby, Thomas, my dear Thomas, died. They said it was a 'magical accident.' Magical, yes. Magic killed him. My brother and my husband, the two people dearest to me, were killed by magic. Now it's just you and me. Now, I can't afford to lose anybody else to magic. That's why you can't have the letter." I was shocked. Stunned. Every question I'd been itching after, every gap in the knowledge of my life was answered. But wait...

"Does that mean I'm a witch?" Even after the depressing knowledge I had just received, a small smile lit my face.

"I know it's exciting, but it'll bring nothing but trouble. I can't let you go to Hogwarts, dear, I'm sorry. That's my final answer to that topic. Nothing can sway my opinion, so please don't try. I beg you." I knew she was telling the truth. As much as I wanted to try to change her opinion, there was no chance. However, I wasn't going to give up.

There was one person who could help me. One person, in a hospital in London. I had to make a plan. A plan to see Grandma Jeanne.


End file.
